


The Blue Shirt

by Louffox



Category: JackSepticEye (YouTube RPF), Markiplier (YouTube RPF), youtube - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Possible slow build, Septiplier - Freeform, Sushi, Unrequited Crush, cuteness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 12:59:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4020727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Louffox/pseuds/Louffox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack's freshly moved to LA. Mark is determined to integrate him properly to the sunny city via exploration of take-out food. And Jack- well, he's happy spending time with Mark.</p><p>"Blue, like your eyes."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Blue Shirt

**Author's Note:**

> These two adorable shits are gonna be the death of me, I swear. I don't know how I got into this ship. I just fell into it. Like taking a tumble into a trash pile. (Help, I've fallen and I can't get up.)
> 
> This is a oneshot for now, but it might turn into a series of somewhat disconnected chapters leading to a proper relationship. A slow build sort of thing. We'll see. If anyone has any prompts/situations they want to see, let me know in the comments! I love new ideas!

Moving to LA was easier than he’d expected.

Getting his things there was a hassle, sure, and the business of unpacking was a bitch, but the initial packing was easy, and adjusting to the American city was a breeze. His sleep schedule had never followed typical Ireland circadian patterns anyways, and he was used to walking and using public transportation. The lack of ceaseless rain was nice. All that was left was to stake out the best take out food, and get used to everyone travelling on the wrong side of the road and sidewalks.

The latter was on him. The former was taken up by Mark, as a sort of project.

And therein lay the hard part of moving to LA.

When Jack had started YouTube, he’d had a middle school style crush on Markiplier. The kind that happened suddenly and was overwhelming. The kind that makes you smile so hard it hurts at a single glance at the object of fixation. Whenever Markiplier was on his monitor, Jack was giggly and borderline manic. He daydreamed fantastic scenarios where they met. He saw no harm in his crush. He never mentioned it on his channel, but he didn’t try to suppress it. He let himself indulge in the crush.

And then his channel blew up and he became well known, and Markiplier became Mark, his friend. They went from acquaintances to friends to pals to bros. He did his best to smother his crush, knowing Mark wanted a friend of him, not a gushing fan. He didn’t want to embarrass himself, or embarrass Mark. And so the crush went away.

It was replaced with something worse, something much more frightening- serious affection. The more he got to know Mark, the more he began to seriously care about him. He remembered details about his facial cues, his favorite foods and songs, his shoe size and his opinion on different dog breeds. When he watched Mark’s videos, or when they skyped or snapchatted, Jack’s manic grin was replaced with a softer, more thoughtful, genuine smile. He had a week of recurring dreams where he and Mark simply sat together on the leafy, damp ground in the woods of his childhood home, not minding the discomfort of the forest floor. Mark was speaking, but Jack never heard the words, just the voice. Their shoulders were touching.

When he woke from these, he was disoriented and reaching.

He carried on the same, determined to ignore his feelings until they went away.

\---

“Mark, I’m not sure if you noticed, but I’m an _irishman_. I like beer and bread and cheese. I don’t eat sushi,” he said firmly.

“You drink starbucks and love cake with funfetti frosting,” Mark replied pointedly.

“The starbucks is your fault,” he grumbled, but he gamely picked up the chopsticks, fumbling with them. “Oh damn, looks like I can’t use the chopsticks. No sushi for me. Bummer,” he said cheerfully.

“Oh c’mon. You’ve just got try it just this once, and if you don’t like it, I’ll never hassle you again. But if you live in LA, you’ve got to at least try sushi. That’s what we do here, we drink starbucks and wear sunglasses and flip flops and we eat sushi.”

“Fine, just this once. And you’ll hold my hoodie strings back when I’m barfing?”

“Yeah, okay,” Mark snorted. He picked up his chopsticks to demonstrate how to use them. “See, the top one you hold with your pointer finger and thumb, and the bottom one just kind of rests here, like that.” Jack pinched the sticks and tried to move them, but one slid out of his hand.

“Can’t I just eat with my fingers?”

“ _No_ , I’m not eating sushi with someone who picks it up with their fingers. Here, like this,” Mark said, impatiently dropping his own chopsticks and taking Jack’s discarded pair and Jack’s hand.

Mark’s hand was cool and dry on Jack’s, his fingers confident and gentle.

“See, this one goes here, and- bend your fingers!- this one… yeah, like that. And you move them by lifting just this one, the other stays stationary. Yeah, like that!” Mark said, pushing Jack’s hand into proper form, setting the chopsticks right. Jack moved them and felt a rush- pride at success, and joy at the simple contact with the object of his feelings.

Mark broke the contact and picked up his own chopsticks. “Alright, so this is soy sauce, this is wasabi, and this is ginger. Nobody likes ginger, ignore it. You take a little wasabi like this, on your chopsticks, and kind of mush it on top of the sushi, and then put it in the soy sauce, and then you eat it.” He demonstrated, pinching a tiny amount of wasabi and smearing it over the top of a piece, dragged the piece through the soy sauce, and picked it up and placed it in his mouth. “Try the sweet potato one first, it doesn’t actually have raw fish in it. It’ll be the test piece.”

Jack obediently followed the instructions, albeit more clumsily. He lifted the sushi triumphantly, and took a bite.

The sushi fell apart, half of it going in his mouth, the rest of it crumbling down his front, dropping soy-sauce soaked rice and slivers of sweet potato and cucumber on his hoodie, leaving him holding a shred of seaweed in his chopsticks.

“You don’t bite it, you put the whole thing in your mouth!” Mark said, roaring with laughter. Jack jumped up, dropping his chopsticks, scattering more rice on the floor, and pulled at his hoodie.

“Shit, you didn’t tell me that!”

“You’re gonna want to get that off, man, soy sauce stains. I’ll throw that in the sink right now.”

“I’m not wearing a shirt under this.”

“So? You can borrow one of mine. Get that off so I can get it soaking, before it stains,” he advised. Jack pulled it over his head, hoping that he wasn’t blushing as hard as it felt. Mark took it and brought it over to the sink, running water over the brown splotches on its front. “I’ve got some laundry to do, I’ll just keep it in the sink and throw it in with my things after lunch. As long as it doesn’t dry, it should be okay.”

“Good,” Jack said, grabbing a napkin and cleaning up the mess on the floor and table. It was one of his favorite hoodies, a bright blue one. (He usually wore his favorite clothes when he had lunch with Mark.)

“C’mon, I’ll grab you a shirt. What size do you wear?”

“Medium or small, usually.”

“Skinny nerd,” Mark teased. “I wear medium or large, to leave room for all my so strong muscles.” He lapsed into a pretentious russian accent at the end of his sentence. He led Jack to his room and opened his closet, examining the contents. Jack tried to act casual. Just shirtless with his good friend Mark, whom he certainly didn’t have a massive and serious crush on. Yep, casual as can be.

He didn’t know what to do with his hands. He crossed his arms, and realized that make him look defensive, and put his hands in his pocket but then felt like he was posing, so he picked up Mark’s amnesia monster to have something to do with his hands.

“I don’t know if this is adorable or terrifying. How do you sleep with this staring at you?” he said conversationally.

“Adorable, it’s definitely adorable,” Mark laughed. He pulled a shirt off a hanger and handed it to Jack. “Here, this is a little small on me, it should fit you.” Jack pulled it on, and found it didn’t fit too badly. “Nice. I grabbed blue cause that’s what I always imagine you in. You look best in it- blue, like your eyes,” Mark said with a grin, and then turned and headed back to the kitchen.

Jack allowed himself a silent giggle, pressing his hand to his mouth, before composing himself and following him.

His next bite of sushi was much more successful, and he grudgingly admitted that it actually was pretty tasty, and they ended up fighting with their chopsticks for the last piece of spicy yellowfin.

\---

A few days later, they met up at Ryan and Daniel’s for a live action recording.

“I’ve got your hoodie,” Mark said when he picked Jack up. (Jack didn’t have a car, nor did he want one- LA traffic was terrifying, and American drivers were much ruder than the folk in Ireland. And he wasn’t sure about driving on the left side of the car- he felt unbalanced and dizzy.)

“Shit, I forgot your shirt up in my apartment. I’ll go grab it, won’t be but a sec,” he said, embarrassed, unbuckling to go back in.

“It’s fine, no rush. It was a little small on me, and you really do look best in blue. Brings your eyes out,” Mark said casually, already pulling away from the curb.

“No, you don’t-,”

“I’m serious. It looked better on you anyways. Buckle up,” Mark said, firmly, effectively ending the debate. “Now, today’s live action....”

Jack didn’t mention the shirt again. He felt guilty for not returning it, but owning something of Mark’s was strangely intimate. He’d washed in in preparation to return it, so he didn’t sniff it or anything strange like that, but he always smiled a little when he saw it hanging in his own closet, and when he wore it to make a vlog, the comments said it was one of the peppiest, most optimistic vlogs he'd ever done.

(The hoodie Mark returned he did sniff a few times, admittedly. It smelled like clean linen and wind and clothespins, like whatever laundry soap Mark used.)

**Author's Note:**

> ALL YOUR PROMPT ARE BELONG TO US


End file.
